Optical fibers are widely used in a variety of applications, most notably in telecommunications, where optical fibers revolutionized the industry. Optical fibers are typically carried in fiber optic cables which range from one to as many as hundreds of optical fibers per cable. Normally, the fiber optic cable contains optical fiber strands in buffer tubes, either loose or in ribbon form. If a cable is to be joined to another cable or hardware in the field by connectors, it is common to attach the connectors to the cable at the factory before the cable is shipped to the installation site. This process is called “connectorization.”
Fiber optic cable connectorization can be a very labor intensive process because the fiber optic connector is usually attached to each optical fiber in the fiber optic cable manually, one at a time. The manual process involves breaking out or “furcating” the optical fiber strands housed in the buffer tube or tubes inside the fiber optic cable using a buffer tube fanout insert assembly. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,688 discloses a furcation kit used to furcate the individual fibers from a cable for connectorization. After furcation, a connector is installed that requires precise techniques to insure quality.
Optical cables comprising 12-strand groups have typically been used for connectivity in data centers. The optical fiber strands of a particular 12-strand group can be furcated using a single-channel furcation tube and thereby routed to a 12 fiber connector where the individual optical fibers are terminated in the connector. Typically, the connector is configured to receive the furcation tube and is coupled thereto. With the migration from 10 GbE systems to 40 GbE and 100 GbE systems there will be a need to transition to 24 fiber connectors for data transmission over parallel optics. Since standardized color coding provides for only 12 colors (without resorting to stripes, bands or additional indicia), using a conventional single-cavity furcation tube to accommodate 24 optical fiber strands will require 12 of the 24 strands to be separately marked so they can be sorted at the connector end. Moreover, using two single-cavity furcation tubes and feeding them into the back of the 24 fiber connector would be bulky and cumbersome, and is not a commercially attractive option. Thus, there is a need for a furcation tube sized to fit properly into the back of a conventional 24-strand connector that avoids the disadvantages of one or two single-cavity furcation tubes.